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You'll Totally Believe Why These Startups Failed
Nerval's Lobster writes: If you ever wanted a glimpse into what dooms startups, look no further than autopsy.io, a website that lists the reasons why many newborn tech firms imploded. The website offers entrepreneurs the ability to self-explain why their startup didn't quite make it; in a bid to separate real-life stories from entertaining fictions, the application form asks for a link to a blog post or medium article "that tells the story of the failure," along with the founder(s) Twitter handle and Crunchbase or Angel.co profile. Some of the reasons listed for failure are maddeningly opaque, such as UniSport's "for a number of reasons" or PlayCafe's "we didn't reach enough users." Others are bleakly hilarious; as the founders of Zillionears, self-billed as a "creative pre-sale platform for musicians," confessed: "People really didn't really LIKE anything about our product." If you're thinking of launching your own company, or you work for a wet-behind-the-ears startup, it's worth scanning the list to see if any of these potential crises are brewing in your setup.
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Many entrepreneurs wait too long before calling in a business person to watch over the financial aspects and business goals of the company.
This type of stuff happens all the time. A lot of people failed to realize that running a business is harder than it seems when you don't.
"If you build it, they will come" is a false statement. "If you build it, and people want it, if they don't you need to market it so they want it, if they do they need to know about it, if they know about it they need to like it better then any alternatives... To do this you need funding"
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I used to work for a "dot-com" startup, and getting bought out was considered a plus: founders get big bucks and some other shmuck gets the worries of making the contraption actually fly (i.e. profitable).
I actually tried a few startups on my own, some even semi-promising, but with a new family, I realized I needed a day-job to pay the bills and couldn't wait around waiting for such to grow big enough to sustain us.
Some lessons:
1. K.I.S.S. - Don't get feature-happy up front. Make "hooks" for planned additions if you want, but don't get carried away.
2. Low overhead - Don't buy junk you don't really need
3. Be adaptable - You will learn about the niche(s) as you go and will need to change to adjust to the knowledge
4. Have a Plan B. You may fail.
5. Keep the service super-cheep or free to attract customers at first. Few will pay top dollar for a new service.
Table-ized A.I.
I've seen two quasi-startups go down the tubes from the inside.
One company had some very clever ideas, but were chronically incapable of making reliable hardware, or of making software that worked. They had no internal procedures to track what they were making, what it was supposed to do, or how they knew it worked. Too many releases were "we have to ship something to keep from losing what little credibility we still have".
Another company tried to reinvent itself after its prime business peaked and then started to implode. The idea we tried to develop wasn't commercially uninteresting, but we had major focus issues. What, exactly, do we want to do? Who is going to buy it? For how much? Having owned our old industry we weren't very good at competing with others in our new industry.
Both companies had issues with ineffectual leadership, flavour-of-the-month development, and business decisions made to help friends rather than make money. Both were broadsided by external developments that eventually rendered their products commercially irrelevant.
...laura